Meredith O'Brien: Doing it all means living with the imperfect

Meredith O'Brien

Monday

Jan 25, 2010 at 12:01 AMJan 25, 2010 at 2:45 AM

Whenever I pick up a new book about work and moms, I mentally prep myself for a chastising lecture. Could journalist Mika Brzezinski's new book "All Things at Once," be any different? I was pleasantly surprised.

Piles of books, countless articles and many Web sites frequently tell moms that they can (and should) be successful career women, supermoms, domestic goddesses and the kind of wives men dream about, all while remaining toned, sexy and in the mood.

But all this balancing nonsense is largely an illusion, unless you’re independently wealthy, give up sleep and have a small brigade of personal and household staff that can assist you in crafting this so-called “perfect” life.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are competing books, articles and Web sites that tell mothers they can’t and shouldn’t try to have a career while in the midst of raising a young family, attempting to excel at wifedom and the domestic arts. Those writers tell women that the only way to be a good mother is to shelve a career and personal interests in service to one’s children. Such sacrifice is necessary to be a good mother, the argument goes, though similar advice is rarely doled out to fathers.

Whenever I pick up a new book about work and moms, I mentally prep myself for either a chastising lecture rapping working mothers’ knuckles with a guilt-wielding ruler, or a tome that clucks its tongue at women who decide to forgo full-time work when they’re rearing their young children and calls them foolish, deluded, Stone Age anti-feminists.

So when I learned that journalist Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the MSNBC talk show “Morning Joe,” had written a memoir bearing the title “All Things at Once,” I imagined it would be one of those “You go girl!” advice books, replete with a how-to list about how to have it all. As it turns out, what I found in Brzezinski’s book wasn’t dogmatic, but was nuanced, messy and reality-based. A lot like life.

Chronicling her trek through TV journalism and a labyrinth of network and cable news stations, through a life-threatening injury to her 4-month-old daughter when Brzezinski fell down the stairs while holding her, and the downward spiral that followed when she tried to be all things to all people, Brzezinski did not wind up telling mothers what they should do with their lives.

“Looking back, I realize my biggest failures always seemed to find me when I was trying to do too much too soon,” she wrote. “When I wasn’t ready to accept that I needed to choose one aspect of my life over another – or risk crashing and losing everything. Your job can be a big part of who you are, but it shouldn’t be the whole package. Your family and relationships should be central, but they needn’t be front and center at all times.”

Brzezinski – 42, who’s married to another TV journalist with whom she’s raising their two daughters, a teen and an 11-year-old -- has ridden a professional and personal rollercoaster, including being fired from CBS at age 39, which left her feeling unmoored. Following her termination, she tried to be an at-home mom, only to realize that she was miserable because she’s “hard wired” to work. However, she decided that whatever job she eventually got shouldn’t up-end the other parts of her life.

“For a long time, I tried to push ahead through tremendous exhaustion just to say that I could do it all,” Brzezinski wrote. “I wanted to show the world that I could manage a career with crazy hours, be a wife, run a household, and take care of small children.”

But when reality slapped her in the face, Brzezinksi said she learned from her failures that she couldn’t do it all and that she shouldn’t let any one role -- mother, wife, journalist -- singularly define who she is. Instead of climbing onto a feminist or a sancti-mommy high horse like many who tackle this subject tend to do, she urged women to trust their instincts, plan for the long term and set reasonable goals.

As her fantasies fell by the wayside that she could simultaneously be a high-powered TV journalist, an always-there mom and someone who’s on hand to volunteer at the kids’ schools, Brzezinski said she needed to let go of the notion of perfection and control in all areas of her life.

At her husband’s urging, they hired child care help and she decided she was OK with missing her children’s school and extra-curricular events (as many dads do) and took jobs she felt would satisfy her professionally and wouldn’t make her life hell. Additionally, she said she’s tuned out judgmental people: “I’m sure there are people in my community – parents, teachers ... who shake their heads and question my priorities. For all I know, they might even question my love for my children, but I’ve stopped letting the second guesses of others add to my stress.”

Writing on “The Huffington Post,” Brzezinski said she hopes that “All Things at Once” will “send the message that you can be all things, just don’t expect it to be perfect, and at times, don’t be surprised if it is ugly.”

That’s not a message you oftentimes hear, that you can be a mom, a wife and a professional but everything won’t necessarily be pretty, and that you should pace yourself. This is something I -- a guilt-ridden-work-from-home-mother who never feels as if she’s doing any one thing exceptionally well – can rally around.

Columnist Meredith O’Brien blogs about parenting at the Picket Fence Post and about pop culture at Notes from the Asylum. Follow her on Twitter: MeredithOBrien.

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